NORWALK – A jury on Tuesday convicted a South Whittier man of shooting his girlfriend to death in 2003 and of killing and robbing three men he lured to his home under the pretext of selling his car in 2004.

Now the Norwalk Superior Court jurors will decide next week if Cimarron Bell, 36, should get the death penalty.

The jury found Bell guilty of the Nov. 12, 2003 first degree murder of Ineka Edmondson, 22, of Compton whose body was discovered in her parked car in an industrial area in La Habra. He was also convicted of the first degree murders of Fernando Pina, 25, of Mexico and West Covina residents Mario Larios, 23, and Edgar Valles, 22, during a Jan. 27, 2004 robbery at his South Whittier residence.

The bodies of the three men were found three days later in Larios’ leased Mercedes which had been abandoned in a commercial center in La Mirada.

The jury also found true the allegations that Bell committed multiple murders, the South Whittier murders were done for financial gain and he killed the three men by lying in wait, according to Deputy District Attorney Todd Hicks.

“I think they (the jury) were impressed about the evidence they heard and the witnesses they heard,” Hicks said.

Authorities said Bell committed the triple murders with another man, 28-year-old Briaell Michael Lee, of Los Angeles. Lee will be tried later this year.

According to the prosecution, Bell killed because of greed.

The prosecution argued that Bell told Edmondson to meet him in La Habra near a business where he worked as a janitor and shot her three times in the head. Bell believed she was stealing from him in their check-cashing scheme and was telling tales about them being together, Hicks said.

The triple murders happened less than three months later. Bell put an ad in a magazine selling his modified Monte Carlo for $8500. But authorities said he had no intention of selling the car and hatched a scam to lure Latino buyers he would then rob and kill.

Larios went to buy the car, accompanied by his friend, Valles. Pina, who was a cousin of Larios, tagged along.

“Mario was going to buy a car. He got tricked into buying a car, instead he lost his life,” Hicks said.

Harriet Hawkins, who is one of Bell’s defense attorneys, declined comment on the verdict.

Ruby Gonzales started working for the company in 1991. Since then she has written about cities, school districts, crimes, cold cases, courts, the San Gabriel River, local history, anime, insects, forensics and the early days of the Internet when people still referred to it as the "information superhighway." Her current beat includes breaking news, crimes and courts for the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Pasadena Star News and Whittier Daily News. When not in crime reporter mode, she frequents the remaining bookstores in the San Gabriel Valley, haunts craft stores or gets dragged to eateries by a relative who is a foodie.

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